Do all wifi connections support iPod touch notifications?

I have an iPod Touch 4G. I use it mostly at work on a college campus, where there is wifi everywhere. I never get any notifications on my iPod; I have to manually load each app to check for messages, updates, etc. I didn't even realize that the pop-up notifications were not working until I took my iPod over to a friend's house. His house is equipped with a pretty basic router, and when I connected to it, I got about 10 pop-up notifications all at once. Why doesn't this happen at work? And yes, I have notifications on for all of my apps in Settings.